WVU Organic Research Project

Project Update (7/30/01)

Farm Field Day

• Our first field day, begins at 3:00 p.m. this Thursday, August 2nd! If you haven't pre-registered already send an email to Tom Batchelor  to make sure we'll have a meal ready for you. We'll bring our guests around the farm on wagons to visit our many organic research studies. Bring questions!

What's ripe? 

• String beans -- one last harvest before we pull the plants. 
• Zucchini -- coming on strong.
• Basil -- last week's harvest was twice as big as the week before. Even more coming this week.
• Tomatoes -- harvest began in earnest last week. We'll have plenty of tomatoes in time for the field day.
• Peppers -- last week saw a huge harvest of beautiful green peppers.
• Potatoes -- we plan to harvest the first of the potatoes this week, to serve at the field day.

 

 

Buy our produce at the Mountain People's Market, the Saturday Market on High St., and select local restaurants.

Critter counts.

• Mexican bean beetles are feasting on our string bean plants. To help break their lifecycle we plan to leave some time between pulling the current beans and planting the fall crop.
• Imported cabbageworm eggs are all over our Brussels sprouts. The caterpillars have begun to hatch, but we can expect many more before long. Another application of the bacterial insecticide Baccilus thuringiensis may be necessary to prevent damage.
• The electric fences, which seemed to be keeping groundhogs out of our plots for some time, have stopped working. We have seen several groundhogs brave the shock and charge straight through for a snack.

Brown bag lunch

• Last week's Brown Bag lunch was cancelled, due to rain. The next lunch will be Thursday, August 9th. The topic will be announced in next week's update. 

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